


Trickster Spirits Don't Get To Have Names

by somegunemojis



Category: Naruto
Genre: and haku, and various ocs - Freeform, cameo appearances from team seven, oh lee also makes a brief appearance, sai is trans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 04:40:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17338763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: snapshots of a life lived, lessons learned, people loved.





	Trickster Spirits Don't Get To Have Names

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first work i'm posting on AO3 and it's part of a 'verse i've built up on tumblr. it's a little chaotic but it is what it is.

## ONE FOR SORROW,

>          the sparrow is nine years old when it cuts down its brother. 
> 
>     the old man says,  _fly_. it leaps. he says,  _kill_ , and it gives chase. all it takes is one. one hour, chasing him down like a dog, one shaky,  _it’s okay. you can live_ , one neat slice of a blade. one head, delivered like a trophy. 
> 
>     they call this a graduation. it feels the noose tighten. 

## TWO FOR JOY,

>          it learns: 
> 
>     i.   the roar of the wind in freefall, delirious from the force of it pushing the air from its lungs, the adrenaline rush. a high it doesn’t want to come down from, even as it’s caught in still clumsily drawn ink-claws, thrown once more only to be caught on its creation’s back instead. the sparrow doesn’t return to the earth for hours, until its chakra whittled to nearly nothing. nobody asks where it has been. 
> 
>     ii.   for hours it watches a troupe of children dance one afternoon, the waves of laughter and music lulling it into some kind of contentment. it pulls out the scroll, the brush, and inks their forms down in quick sketches. so it doesn’t forget. late at night, it animates them, tries to copy the movements from memory, adds its own twists and hops, dances with the tiny ink forms into the small hours of the morning. 

## THREE FOR A GIRL,

> _she_  isn’t right. 
> 
>      the old man calls her,  _my dear_ , and his hand in her hair is a farce, an impersonation of tenderness, and still she leans into it. he is grizzled, and frail, but his hands do not shake when they reach out to her. she thinks, maybe, she hates him. she knows she would die for him.
> 
>       _little bird_ , the swordswoman calls her, knocking her down with the flat of her blade. this is a kindness rarely afforded – most of the instructors aim to hurt, to cut deep, claim they learn better that way. the swordswoman teaches her to flay flesh from bone with one neat stroke, the advantage of speed, of silence. she tells her,  _you are a little killer_ , sneaks her bits, and odds, and ends, the occasional treat. she disappears one day, and no one mentions her again. 
> 
>      he calls her  _sweetling_. his hand is on her knee. she will be glad to kill him later, feels satisfied at the gaping hole where his tongue used to be. she’s never taken pleasure in a mission before now. 

## FOUR FOR A BOY,

>           he cuts his hair. few things change, but it’s a start.
> 
>      it looks terrible, patchy, cropped so close to his head, like a case of mange. he can’t stop running his fingers over the spots where he’d cut too close to his scalp with the kunai, the scabs take forever to heal. he feels lighter. 
> 
>      the recipients of the message he brings call him ‘it’. they call him an ugly little monster, his face hidden. on his return, his fingers shake when they touch the bare spots on his scalp. he asks his bunk mate to even it out for him. 
> 
>       _handsome little devil, aren’t you?_  the old woman says it at least once a day, ruffling his hair. he never speaks, but he supposes she doesn’t need him to. she thinks she has pulled a feral little stray in from the cold, perhaps believes he will speak in his own time, doesn’t mind it taking a while as long as he eats the food she cooks him (too rich, it makes him sick at first) and helps her into town to do old lady things. she doesn’t know he’s here to kill her. he doesn’t understand why he has to. she is old, she cannot be a threat. he has not seen her move faster than a snail’s pace at anything other than knitting. he tells them so, and they want him to kill her anyway. he says no, but still she dies. he does too. 
> 
>      when he is sixteen, they send him for another undercover assignment. the first thing he does is steal a bottle of oil, scented like dragon’s blood. he never uses it, but he keeps it on a shelf, hidden behind some books. sometimes he takes it out just to hold it, or to twist off the cap and smell it. 

## FIVE FOR SILVER,

>           under the pale light of the moon, he sees.
> 
>      the team is out late, and the chill of winter is creeping in. the captain had dropped a cloak on his shoulders when he’d started to shiver, and he thinks the clouds from their breathless laughter glitter brightly in the night like their own stars, a nebula forming in front of them from the sheer force of their joy. he tugs the cloak closer, if only to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 
> 
>      the healer with the scarred knuckles sweeps her hair back one night and the moonlight catches on a glint hanging her ear, shaped like a teardrop. he cannot tear his eyes away, leans closer, and her hands are gentle when she cups his face and holds him there. she tells him they were her grandmother’s, that she only wears them when she’s sure they’re safe. he tells her they’re beautiful, earnest in the face of her honesty, and he cannot say for sure, but he thinks she blushes. 
> 
>      he and the hunter with the lightning blood spend a long night in tense silence sitting next to a hospital bed. they only speak in the small hours, the older man not looking away from the slow rise and fall of the chest occupying the bed, and he cannot look away from the way he blends perfectly with the rest of the monochrome of the hospital. the hunter says,  _if you pick up this habit of being a self sacrificing idiot, i’ll make the rest of your short life extremely painful_. he says,  _yes sensei._  
> 
>      the hero, a man bursting with determination enough to be considered a human sun, pulls his shirt off with a muttered curse. his hair, the whites of his eyes, the eyeteeth that poke out from the edge of a smile are all washed with the same shade, seemingly glowing. the creature that is no longer a sparrow catches a glimpse of a silver chain, leans forward to follow the trail to the pendant at the end of it. his hand settles, palm flat against the warm skin of his chest, pinning it between them. the hero puts his hand over his, closes his eyes, and sighs out the weight of the world. 
> 
>      he bums a cigarette off the captain once – catches him chainsmoking outside a bar, placid like an inland lake, tells him the healer would be pissed if she knew. only shuts up when he decides to share. the moon is full, but the night is clouded, leaving only the faintest light for them to see by. he thinks the captain looks tired. the smoke slips from their mouths like the breath of a dragon, dissipating in the darkness. they finish the last two in the pack in silence. he says,  _these are nasty,_  gets a gentle swat on the back of the head, and a laugh, and they go their separate ways. 

## SIX FOR GOLD,

>           in the burning, inescapable light of the sun, he loves. 
> 
>      he sits up one night with a name on his lips, dead longer than he has lived. shakes himself apart, sweating and grey until the first light peeks through his window, creeping across his bed like fingers, reaching, stretching. he shuts his eyes against it, but the light reminds him he has places to be. 
> 
>      in the heat of the day, he lays in the grass, bruised to the core and panting. the fighter is humming, kneeling forest-green and bubbling next to him, fingers working out of sight. when he finally sits up, a crown of dandelions is bequeathed to him, and he takes it with great dignity, and places it on his head. the answering smile is stunning. 
> 
>      the malady haloed in purple pulls him from his desk at midday, linking their arms and insisting he take the rest of the day off. once is all it takes before he’s convinced, but he pretends to think about it, if only to hear the other man come up with increasingly outlandish and hilarious bribes. they were going somewhere, but between point a and point b they get distracted, end up tangled in one another in a park under a bridge, kissing the day away like a couple of horny teenagers, touching each other’s faces, stealing each other’s breath.
> 
>      several hours pass with them lounging in the shade of a massive willow tree. the virgin mumbles things, sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes he responds. his head rests on the man’s thigh, their fingers tangle together, and for a while they know peace. 
> 
>     it’s evening, the summer sunset leaving the wolf washed in all the colors of the dying light. they’re pressed close for warmth on the edge of the roof, kicking feet hanging over the edge, chopsticks waving wildly in the air for emphasis. every burst of laughter is a victory, every soft brush of their shoulders weathering away the burrs on his soul. they are kin. they know one another. 
> 
>     the quiet hours of the morning leave him perched in the dragon’s lap, nose to nose with him, sharing breath, and secrets, electrifying kisses. he presses the man into the bed and leaves him breathless, again, and again, and again. he wants the moment to last forever, can’t look away from him for fear of missing a single, perfect detail, for fear he is blowing smoke. 

## SEVEN FOR A SECRET, NEVER TO BE TOLD.

>           there are things he holds close to his heart, things he will not let go.
> 
>      i.  he will never heal,
> 
>      ii.   ~~all their tender hearts~~
> 
>      iii.   ~~there is no such thing as freedom~~
> 
>      iv.   ~~they all deserve a little bit of faith, forgiveness, redemption~~
> 
>      v.   ~~love is only a weakness if you let it be so~~
> 
>      vi.   ~~the sway of hips to an imagined tune~~
> 
>      vii.  he loves them all. 

## EIGHT FOR A WISH,

>           it takes him a while to get the hang of things.
> 
>      when the sun sets, he imagines a light in the darkness to guide him. he has been wandering so long, and he thinks, perhaps, it is time for him to find a home.
> 
>      on an assignment to the land of grass, he spends a majority of his watch one night observing a band of coyotes nip at each other as they rip apart the carcass of a deer, until there are nothing but scraps. in the dawn, the crows descend upon the rest. 
> 
>      an ancient crone with milky blue eyes grabs him by the wrist one day, her grip so strong it feels like his bones are being crushed into dust. she beseeches him to remember what he is, and no one around him reacts at all. 
> 
>      he walks until his feet bleed, once. just to see how far he can go, ends up somewhere in the land of whirlpools, sits at the edge of a cliff over a raging sea just to feel the spray, and then walks back. there isn’t a single comment on his absence, and eventually the scabs turn to scars, and then those fade too.
> 
>      a stray dog follows him home one night, nothing but skin and bone. it vomits up any food it receives, curls up and dies in his lap some time in the night. he can feel it when the ribs stop shifting, but he doesn’t stop stroking its nicked ears until well after the sun has risen, just because he doesn’t know what else to do. 
> 
>      there is a duck pond a few minutes’ walk from his place, and he spends an hour there every morning for three months, just to see what it’s like. the ducks start to know him, he feeds them rice, and chopped lettuce, tiny, carefully sliced grapes. he goes on a mission for three weeks, and when he comes back they are weary of him once more. he doesn’t go back. 
> 
>      he ages. 
> 
>      it seems like death lurks around every corner, her bony fingers lingering in his peripheral vision. he is no stranger to being hunted. he is not afraid. he just doesn’t want to go. and so he will not go easy. 

## NINE FOR A KISS,

>           there are some things that matter, even if he doesn’t remember all of them. 
> 
>      his mother, in an uncharacteristic fit of tenderness, lays a kiss upon his brow before he is pulled from her grasp. she dies quietly, a hand stretched out for him, the knife that had been used to cut his umbilical cord buried in her throat. 
> 
>      his tiny body is dying of a fever, shaking apart at the seams in the cramped ROOT dormitory. most of the children hiss curses at him, and these are the ones that survive. a girl with blood red hair holds his hand, and a boy with a halo of silver brushes sticky black strands back and kisses his crown gently. confesses it’s something his mother had done, once, he swears he remembers it.
> 
>      he’s eleven when he’s roaming the streets. slipped his leash, so to speak, and the crowds are bustling. he bumps into a girl half his size, knocks her to the ground, freezes when she shows him her bleeding hand.  _you have to kiss it better_ , she says, so imperiously that he can’t  _not_  obey. he returns to the compound with a tiny smear of blood on his cheek, but he manages to swipe it away before anyone notices. 
> 
>      there are blonde strands between his fingers, a familiar smart mouth pressed to his own, leaving the skin he touches aflame. it’s something terrible, possessive, wild. it’s a promise neither of them are sure they can (or want,) to keep. 
> 
>       she’s pulled her gloves off, puts her hand over his mouth to see if he’s breathing. he blinks his eyes open, blearily, opens his mouth to make another smart comment. her hand clamps down even as she laughs, and she doesn’t pull away when he licks her hand, just leans down to peck a kiss on the corner of his eye.
> 
>      this one is a fight, the gnashing of teeth, bloodied lips and harsh breath, the hot slide of fingers between his legs, and then a tongue. there’s nothing gentle about it, and it leaves something howling and cold and aching in his chest. he takes as much as he can get. 
> 
>      there’s a predator laying kisses on his eyelids. he’s laughing about it, and that is his life. 
> 
>      there are several, bone breaking blows landed on his torso. his heart stutters, but does not restart. lips brush his, salty with tears, coppery with blood, desperate because they love him. his lungs inflate, and deflate, and his body remains still. rinse. repeat. it doesn’t work.
> 
>      a pale hand settles over cold stone. his name would be engraved here, if he had one. the granite will not take the one they called him, remaining smooth and polished no matter how many chisels try to break it. lips brush the crest, a sentimental gesture that brings no comfort. they leave white lilies in the grass in front of the headstone, and they do not return to the empty grave.

## TEN FOR A BIRD, YOU MUST NOT MISS.

>           when he goes, he goes hard. clawing, snarling, bleeding and cursing. 
> 
>      it hardly comes as a surprise to him. his days have been numbered since he came into this world, blue in the face, umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. he can only put death off for so long, dodging her cold, skeletal fingers with nothing more than a little grit, and determination. he is freezing, and he is alone, until he is not.
> 
>           he loves you. he’s sorry. 


End file.
